Ian Masters

I spoke with Ambassador Peter Galbraith, former UN Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan spoke about Hamid Karzai's presidency, particularly in light of recent tensions with the United States and renewed evidence of election tampering.

He...

I spoke today with American journalist D. Dalton Bennett, who has been living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan working with the non-profit journalism organization, Sons of Hedin. He was in the thick of things when police and special forces began shooting at demonstrators in downtown Bishkek, and he described his...

James Carroll, writer and former Catholic priest, put the Church's recent scandals into context, offering an interpretation that is both critical and optimistic.

He began by arguing that the Church is now under the control...

Ed. Note: this is a satirical take on the Tea Party Patriots

I spoke with Victor McCoy of the Greater Illinois Chapter of the Tea Party Patriots and Sons to learn about the group from an insider.

We don't know the legality of drone warfare, because right now we're at the stage of simply denying that it even happens.

Peter W. Singer, author of Wired for War: The Robotic Revolution...

Is there really a "new" relationship between the US and Pakistan? It seems that not much has changed in Pakistan, at least when it comes to its military and intelligence services. If anything, the emphasis remains on maintaining power in the region. What seems to be cooperation in the form...

The March 15, 2010 New York Times led with a story about a contractor who had gone rogue using government funds and information sources to run a clandestine private terrorist-hunting program. The principal source for that story, Robert Young Pelton, talked with Ian Masters on his show,

Alaskan journalist Shannyn Moore has been put on notice by Sarah Palin's lawyers not to speak crtically of Palin in the media. I interviewed Moore this morning on Background Briefing on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles to discover what it is she has to say that so threatens someone...

To understand those in power in Iran, the closest parallel would be to imagine the United States run by a theocratic cabal of the Reverends Robertson, Hagee and Dobson who keep the people in line, enforcing moral strictures via vigilante militias composed of young rural "Christian soldiers" who purify society...

THE ZOMBIE PRESIDENCY
by Ian Masters

A majority of Americans breathed a sigh of relief when the Bush/Cheney regime ended, but has it? Like the zombie banks, the era of government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich lives on, with massive transfers of wealth...

Here in blue state America, in the last weeks before the November election, there is premature elation, regime change is in the air. Panic among Republicans is palpable as they sink in the polls and face the fury of hometown constituents disgusted that a now-disgraced ex-congressman was protected by...

With his poll numbers in free-fall and his party in panic at the prospect of a wipe-out in the November election, "the decider" is facing what must be the toughest and most gut-wrenching decision of his life so far. Proud of his lack of introspection and scornful of intellectual deliberation,...

With the U.S. and Iran playing geopolitical "chicken" and the November elections looming, it's worth considering how the tortured politics of the Middle East brought us Nixon, Reagan and Bush's second term. Arguably the almost certain winner of the fateful 1968 election was eliminated by Sirhan Sirhan and Ayatollah Khomeini...

Like diehard fans of a perennially losing team, progressives continue to fume in frustration and flagellate themselves over the fecklessness of the Democratic opposition that can't seem to find a voice in the face of manifestly corrupt and corrosive Republican misrule. With nine months left
before a make-or-break...

Before hyperventilating over President Bush's latest warning to take Bin Laden's recent threat seriously, it's worth remembering Franklin Roosevelt's admonition to America during one of her darkest hours that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." Apparently we have something to fear, we're paying "Homeland Security" fifty billion dollars...

While the latest intelligence scandal adds to the historical catalogue of CIA crimes, much of the outrage over it does seems misplaced. Nobody wants to defend the indefensible and what can you say except that torture and genocide are bad. But the real question is, who authorizes and orders it?...

Who can say, without mental reservation, that George W. Bush was only interested in eavesdropping on al Qaeda's conversations with their sleeper cells in Wyoming and Alaska, those hotbeds of terrorism where Homeland Security has been lavishing taxpayer money? Or could it be that our President, whose entire political career...

Can the clamor of faith-based certainty continue to drown out a seething groundswell of doubt in the land? When will reality bite, banishing the media's right-wing punditocracy to a Siberia of silence and shame? How long can an Administration pretend to be a government, spinning truths instead of facing facts,...

If you think our President is out of touch with reality, his rubber-stamp Congress is even more insulated from the average American. The people's representatives have become such a crony kleptocracy dedicated to the rich, they didn't even notice Randy "Duke" Cunningham driving to work from his yacht in a...

After declaring "Mission Accomplished," and then challenging the insurgents to "bring it on," George W. Bush now tells us that we can't afford to lose the war he already "won," because al Qaeda will be left in charge of Iraq. The nightmare scenario he invented before invading Iraq has become...